Vanilla Malted Thick Shake and…Paediatric Trauma

A few years ago we were invited to Archie’s school for a dinner function. It was the annual get together of the parents of the boys in Archie’s boarding house. Each year group had to put on a performance whether they wanted to or not. All the boys in Archie’s group were reluctant except of course, Archie, who couldn’t have been happier. He threw himself with great enthusiasm into the task and rallied the boys telling them he’d written a short piece set to music and he’d cast them all into various roles and Archie would run the rehearsals and direct it and organise the music and take care of costumes and of course, have the lead role.

Vanilla Malted Thickshake

The night of the big event rolled around and Carl and I were wearing our Sunday best and we were seated at a table with an excellent view of the stage. Just after the buffet roast-and-carvery meal of mediocrity came the announcement that the boys were to go backstage and get ready to perform.

The lights went down, the music started and on came Archie’s group of boys but there was no Archie and that confused me seeing he’d told us he had the lead role. And the boys on stage just stood there while the music played looking confused and doing nothing. Then the music was stopped and there was an announcement, ‘Ladies and Gentleman, one of the boys in Year 8 has a bleeding nose so we’ll now have the Item from Year 9’. And as Archie hadn’t emerged on to the stage I imagined it must have been my son who had the bleeding nose.

But then I felt a tap on my shoulder and I looked up to see an ashen looking woman shaking like a leaf. With a quivering voice she asked, ‘Are you Archie’s mum?’ And I said yes and she said, ‘There’s been an accident, you’d better come quick’. And I told the others at the table that I wouldn’t be long and that I’d be straight back.

But I didn’t get back to my seat at the table with the fabulous view of the stage and neither did Carl.

Some of the ingredients for the best thickshake ever

Because when we went backstage we saw a concussed figure slumped against a wall in the corridor covered in blood. He wasn’t moving and his eyes were closed. It was Archie. I couldn’t imagine what had happened to him. With blood all over his face and soaking his shirt and swimming on the floor around him, it looked like there’d been a stabbing.

The Stage Manager told me that when the boys went backstage Archie ran down a corridor to get the music. Another boy was running down a different corridor and as the corridors intersected the boys collided at high speed, head-on. Archie’s teeth hit the other boy’s forehead resulting in one of Archie’s teeth being forced onto the roof of his mouth and three others were through his lips. It was the bloodiest mess I had ever seen.

The paramedics were called and we left the function in an ambulance.

Archie was taken to the Children’s Hospital and we had an ‘all-nighter’ in the Trauma Department. Archie had about 60 sutures to his lips and some temporary braces to try and hold his teeth within a normal range.

The morning after

Meanwhile the other boy was taken to the school’s hospital where he stayed for four days being treated for a back injury.

The next year at the very same event a decision had been made that there would be no Items.

Archie’s recovery took more than four years and involved numerous visits to a Paediatric Trauma Dentist (who knew there was such a thing?) and braces to correct the alignment of his teeth but, they were all saved!

After this image circulated around the school, Archie’s new nickname was ‘Nemo’

Do episodes of paediatric trauma happen in your family too?

While Archie was convalescing he was on a pureed diet because he couldn’t chew. This is one of the ‘meals’ I used to make for him.

Malted Vanilla Milkshake

Going, going, gone!

Degree of Difficulty: 1/5

Cost: Minimal as these ingredients would be found in most kitchens.

Serves: One invalid patient with a little left over for a sleep-deprived mother suffering from shock

Poor Archie! And poor you; none of that sounds like much fun at all. Though i’m sure those milkshakes went down well. I’ve been pretty lucky with Lil, we haven’t had too many dramas in her three years. A delayed adverse reaction to antibiotics saw her on steroids for a few days, and the egg on her head after she decided to headbutt the wall mirror comprise the worst of it.

Poor bugger – glad he made a full recovery. We were pretty lucky when K was younger. She was about 6 myths old and had a dreadful temp and diarrhoea in the middle of the night. We had her in a bath to cool her down until we called the paediatrician at 6am – rushed her straight to hospital where she was fed via a tube through her nose for 4 days. Man did the paediatrician give us a blasting for not calling him sooner. Luckily we never had to call him again !

I cannot imagine how horrible it must have been for both you and Archie when that happened! (BTW Archie I’m glad you can joke about it now!) The milkshake sounds divine and I’m sure it has healing properties of sorts if we look hard enough for it

Oh my. We have only had one trauma in our family. Nothing to compare to yours. Our son was playing some kind of game in sock feet at boarding school one night. We met them at the emergency room where he got quite a few staples in his head. He has a nice scar that I say he should tell people he got in a knife fight (sounds tougher than running around in socks). I use potato cheddar soup for invalids (wisdom teeth survivors for example). Shakes are always good too!

That is very funny. Running around in socks at boarding school. Yep, that sounds very familiar. He is very fortunate to have had just one injury at boarding school – when Archie was at boarding school there were injured boys everywhere. You would always see boys hobbling around on crutches, or with plasters on their limbs or black eyes, broken noses, split lips and stitches here, there and everywhere. And they were having the time of their lives!

Poor old Archie! My middlec had a disagreement with a slippery dip when she was about3 and smashed her two front teeth. One was removed completely but the emergency dentist decided to leave the other now grey colored tooth in. She had to look like that for about5 years until her adult ones came down, but as there was nothing to guide them they grew in with a finger seized gap between. Another 6 years and braces and a plate later, and she looks lovely!
My mum is a great believer in these style shakes too, she calls them ‘egg flips’ and they certainly are a complete meal in a glass!

Oh, the dreaded slippery dip. How unfortunate that she had to go around looking slightly tragic for so many years. My daughter had teeth issues too from a very young age. Horrendously crooked to be perfectly plain. Well three rounds of braces later and she now has a model’s smile. Glad everything’s worked out for your daughter too.

Oh whoa – I was *not* prepared for that picture… read, *scroll*, read, *scroll*, AARGH. That looks… exceptionally uncomfortable… and I thought I had it bad having my front tooth smashed out with the barrel of a laser gun (long story).

Wowzers – glad it turned out ok in the end though Great looking shake – perfect for those “liquid only” meals!

Well, it’s not so much a long story as a painful one – I went to a friend’s birthday and we did some bowling and then we went into this laser game thing where you wear chest packs and “walk” around in a semi-dark room with obstacles and so forth, shooting each other with these stupid “guns”. It did say not to run, but my friend and I thought we were all cool and commando and so I was running right behind him. He decides to stop and turn around quickly, cracking me in the mouth with the damn gun. I was a bit stunned and looking down could see half a tooth glowing on the floor in the UV light (yum, right?)

Incredibly, it didn’t kill the root of the tooth – just knocked it cleanly in half, although it did leave the nerve exposed which was painful as all hell. 13 or so years later, I now have some metal rod in my jaw and the “fake” tooth on top. To this day it makes me upset because I’ve always had good dental hygiene – I’ve never needed any fillings or anything and aside from alignment not being completely, perfectly straight (because I hated wearing the retainer I was supposed to wear when I was younger) I have (or had) no problems with my teeth and this incident wrecked my “perfect” record… I even got an abcess in the broken tooth a couple of years later because of the breakage, which sucks because that hurt like hell as well!

What a shocking story. You must have been in so much pain – then and later with the abcess. Unbelievable bad luck and I don’t know why they tell boys not to run when they know that’s the only thing they’re programed to do.

Poor Archie that looks awful. Lucky he had such a wonderful mum to look after him.

This looks just like what my mum made for me when I had my wisdom teeth out only she added some almond meal too. I think I was the only person in history to not lose any weight after being on a liquid diet for a week!

Oh Charlie – I have had experience with paediatric trauma dentists, too, so I share your pain. When my youngest was 3 she went face-first onto concrete after the 7 year old who was piggy-backing her tripped. We managed to save her teeth that time, although her sweet little over-bite was gone forever, replaced by a slightly puggish under-bite look.
Sadly, that only lasted for 2 years until her second ever day at school when she bumped her teeth into another childs head in the school playground. That little trauma resulted in a general anaesthetic, five teeth out and a subsequent bone infection that moved to one of the bones in her leg and took 18 months to treat, including 3 months on antibiotics, another 2 teeth out 4 years later and braces for 2 years.
And i won’t even mention the damage that all those antibiotics did to her remaining teeth.
Kids! Who’d have em?!

Whoa, that is one incredible looking injury. The last time I saw lips like that was looking at a pic of Jocelyn Wildenstein! Reading your latest post, thank heavens this shocking accident didn’t put him off something he obviously has held a long term love of. It’s scary what can happen in a second even when doing something entirely innocent.

Oh shit – Poor Archie and you must have nearly peed your pants when you saw him you poor thing.
We had our youngest come downstairs two nights ago at 11pm with blood all over him. We thought he was asleep, but no he was jumping on the bed and hit his head on the corner of a desk. Blood EVERYWHERE. I thought he must have scalped himself or something, but it was just a small cut that decided to bleed profusely. Bloody boys!

When my son was 8 or 9 he was plowing through the house with his Tonka Truck (a plastic toy truck he was WAY too big to be playing with to begin with). He was bent over it running through the house full speed. I told him to slow down or he was going to get hurt. Where the dining room, living room, and kitchen met up there is carpet, linoleum, and then carpet again. Where the dining area begins there is a metal strip. That’s where the trouble was. He came barreling out of the living room off the carpet, onto the linoleum, up onto that metal strip and his truck stopped but he didn’t and he slammed full speed into his plastic truck FACE FIRST! It was horrific! He put his teeth almost all the way through his top lip and the top of the truck had a little opening where you put little people in it and that made an mark on his face that was there for about 3 weeks. He ended up with I think 16 or 18 stitches in his mouth. His wasn’t nearly as awful as Archie’s, but it was pretty awful!

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Charlie Louie

Welcome to Hotly Spiced. My name is Charlie Louie and I live with my husband and three children, Archie, Arabella and Alfie and two elderly ladies, Ruby and Rosie (dachshunds), in an increasingly untidy and dilapidated Sydney eyesore.... [Read More …]